Matters of life and death

Audrey Jenkinson found herself in a strange limbo after her parents died within two years of each other. Her prior fears that her father's cancer would be fatal, and dread that her mother would not survive a series of strokes and heart attacks, continued to haunt her even after their deaths.

Although Jenkinson, a stage and TV actor, says she had never really thought of herself as a carer, she found after her parents' deaths that she had joined the ranks of those left with no role following the loss of a relative for whom they may have sacrificed their careers, independence and emotional lives.

Society assumes that the tens of thousands of people who fall into this category every year simply resume a normal existence once the burden of caring is lifted. Perplexed friends would ask Jenkinson: "But your parents died a year ago, why aren't you getting on with your life?" The answer, which dawned on her fairly quickly, was that she was literally "past caring" - a phrase that has become the title of a book she has written, and published herself, exploring the cloudy, post-bereavement period of picking up the pieces.

The book - coming out in the aftermath of this week's Carers Week - comes 12 years after her father died at 63, and 10 years after her mother's death at 60. It describes the state, which may last years, of no longer having to look after someone, but still feeling haunted by responsibilities and guilt. But it explores the opposite reaction, too, which afflicted Jenkinson also.

"After years of anxiety, worry and fear watching somebody you love in pain, it wears out your spirit until, finally, you just shut down," she says. "For me, it was what I'd seen my parents go through that had a real impact on my sense of zest for life; everything I had once believed in - I wanted to be a great actress - suddenly seemed not so important any more."

Even though her brother, sister and extended family had helped with her parents, and even though her mother's health was at times stable enough for Jenkinson to film a series of Trainer for the BBC, dashing home on days off, the juggling act of nursing and acting took its toll. "After my mum died, I said: 'I'm having time out.' I went away to a part of the country where I didn't know anyone. I was numb; I was saturated; I knew I had to stop and wanted to go away and shrug off any responsibility, any pressure."

So Jenkinson, brought up in a middle-class family in Edinburgh, where her father had been sports editor of the evening newspaper, went and lived for what she describes as a hedonistic year on a houseboat on the Thames at Henley, Oxfordshire.

She didn't do drugs, she wasn't promiscuous, but she did have sexual needs, she confides. "It might be through being in such close proximity to death, there is a sexual drive that comes up, and you just want to have a wild abandoned time. For me, it was a sense of release. I didn't have sex with lots of different men, but found this one man who would have that kind of relationship. It was exactly right for then."

It was during this period of partying on the river, going to posh houses and cocktail parties, that the idea for the book came to her.

When her mother suffered her first stroke, Jenkinson had found a helpful volume on how to cope. She later found books on dealing with bereavement, but nothing on helping people if there had been a long illness. For a while, she felt that the post-caring phase of her life was something other people could not imagine or have experienced in the same way as herself - hers having been a double loss.

Even when the idea of the book took root, it was other people's experiences of coping after caring that she wanted to document, rather than her own. A mention of the project in the newsletter of a carers' association brought a shoal of replies from those willing to be interviewed. But her research was slowed by loss of confidence and self-esteem - another symptom of the strangeness she felt. It was only when she began interviews with other former carers that she found out how common this feeling was.

The realisation led Jenkinson to add to the book a final section of self-help hints for regaining confidence. As she points out, long-term carers develop skills such as compassion, reliability and initiative that become redundant as neither post-carers, nor their potential employers, recognise how such qualities can be used positively in the workplace.

The first part of the book is about something else she did not intend to cover: her own experiences. However, after four rejections of a few draft chapters of the original book by mainstream London publishers - "as an actress, you get used to rejection" - a friend suggested she weave her own story into the narratives of others.

There were other hurdles, too: the slow construction of the book reflected the gradual reconstruction of her own life - and the return of self-confidence. If big publishers would not take it on, she ultimately decided, she would bring it out herself. This is what she is doing, with some of her own money, and with donations from individuals and an award from the Millennium Trust in Scotland.

Years ago, Jenkinson's brother jokingly suggested grief counselling as a career for his sister. In the years that the book has been maturing, though, Jenkinson has developed an interest in healing therapies. She has a dream, as she explains in the book, to see established in a rambling house somewhere in the Border valleys of Scotland a comfortable refuge where past carers could recover, and where good home-produced food and tailored therapies would be part of the restorative regime. And a bigger dream is for a network of such centres throughout Britain.

Meanwhile, at 38, Jenkinson has not given up all thoughts of returning to acting but, with her positive approach to picking up the pieces, post-caring, she is surely - whether or not she realises it - on the road to becoming a life coach.